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theFrumiGroup 27 Powers of Persuasion Simple Strategies to Seduce Audiences & Win Allies Notes by Frumi Rachel Barr, MBA, PhD. Author: Chris St. Hilaire with Lynette Padwa Publisher: Prentice Hall Copyright year: 2010 ISBN: 978-0-7352-0451-5 Authors’ Bios: Chris St. Hilaire is an award-winning message strategist who has developed communication programs for some of the nation’s most powerful corporations, legal teams, and politicians. The first marketer in the courtroom, Chris is the founder of Jury Impact, a national jury consulting firm, and M4 Strategies, a California-based messaging firm that specializes in influencing public policy. Lynette Padwa is a bestselling author with more than 20 years' experience in publishing. In addition to writing her own books, she has collaborated with experts from the fields of business, entertainment, motivational speaking, psychology, the law, health, parenting, hospitality, and more. Author’s big thought: This book offers an entirely new philosophy of communication. True persuasion is not about arm-twisting or out-maneuvering your adversary. True persuasion is the creation of consensus from conflict or indifference. It’s about taking an idea or a course of action and creating unity of purpose. Using current examples ranging from the Obama campaign to KFC, from Starbucks to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim—each chapter of the book offers clear, actionable ways to position your viewpoint as the winning one while also respecting the other side. Rather than turning the situation into “us versus them,” the book offers tactful ways to make the opposition feel valued, not threatened. Running counter to conventional wisdom about power in the workplace, the strategies are insightful, inclusive, and extraordinarily effective. Chapter Notes: Introduction: The Art and Craft of Persuasion . Successful persuasion in every environment shares certain common denominators. Whether you’re talking to your spouse or to 20 million voters, the approach and tactics are the same. All great persuaders use them, and in 27 Powers of Persuasion St. Hilaire shares them with you. True persuasion is the creation of consensus from conflict or indifference. It’s about taking an idea or a course of action and creating unity of purpose. These skills are crucial in business settings, of course, but they’re just as valuable in personal relationships. [email protected] Page 1 . Persuasion is both an art and a craft. In this book you will get ways to think about and implement the craft of persuasion. Whatever your ability, the lessons in this book will help you maximize it and allow you to become more persuasive in every situation you encounter. Whether the arena is personal, political, or the courtroom, the fundamentals of effective persuasion are always the same. The 27 powers are informed by the observations and wisdom of the author’s Buddhist teacher, Master Hang Truong, You can dip into the book wherever you like, focusing on whatever powers meet your needs on a given day. The 27 Powers: 1. Focus on the Goal . People lose sight of the goal and get stuck on the process. “Process” is everything you do to achieve a goal—all the ideas, meetings, paperwork, and steps it takes to get there. Whenever you are trying to persuade, your first mission is to define the goal. The most effective way to do this is not to announce the goal to the group, but to help everyone decide on it together. You want to have the largest possible buy-in from everyone involved, and you get it by having everyone contribute to the goal at the beginning. Simply ask the room: “What’s our goal? What are we trying to accomplish today?” Boil the goal down to one or two simple sentences that everyone agrees on, even if it seems obvious. There is great power in stating the obvious. Every group has an innate longing to be unified. Confusion and discord make people feel anxious and threatened, and unity makes them feel safe. People unify around a goal. Sometimes the most obvious situations are the least clear to the people most deeply involved in them. Be the person who asks the obvious questions and says, “What’s the goal here?” and you’ll be in the best position to lead and persuade the room. 2. Evaluate Egos . In order to persuade, you have to understand the people you’re persuading. At the most basic level that means understanding how the ego works and learning to recognize when someone is feeling threatened. A threatened person is lot going to be open to your ideas, which is why many of the powers in this book are geared toward making people feel safe and included. So you must learn to identify who is feeling safe and who is not. You are part of the dynamic, so you have to pay attention to your own ego too. Eastern philosophers have a view about the push and pull between ego and spirit. The ego creates a wall between you and others; the spirit wants to connect. The ego is fear-based and usually accompanied by insecurity. [email protected] Page 2 . Once you’re aware of the struggle between your ego and your spirit, it frees you. Instead of being driven by your ego, you can recognize it and consciously decide whether to act from ego or from spirit. When you’re trying to persuade people, coming from the spirit—from a place of unity and inclusion is more effective. Before entering a setting where you’re hoping to persuade, it’s a good idea to evaluate the egos that will be in the room, starting with your own. There are areas where your ego is most vulnerable and might cause you to be defensive instead of receptive to other people’s input. You need to be aware of the fear so if it gets activated during your conversation, you can manage it strategically, not emotionally. Then spend a few minutes thinking about each person you’ll be persuading. You’re in a better position to persuade people who threaten your ego if you can step back from your negative feelings and try to neutrally acknowledge the history you have with the person. To evaluate other people’s egos, you can start by realizing that when they walk into the room, their biggest concern will be how you will make them feel. This applies to everyone from the CEO down. People tend to assume that those in positions of power are always confident, but they’re not. No one is immune to feeling insecure. Throughout the conversation, whether they are conscious of it or not, your listeners will be shifting between feeling threatened and feeling safe. People whose egos are secure tend to be outwardly focused and are aware of how the language they use affects others. You may realize that you liked a person because he or she made you feel valued and included. You can also use conversation clues to figure out which people are not secure, and it’s usually pretty obvious. In any group, the people who know how to make others feel included are the people whose opinions you should be most concerned with, because everyone else is going to gravitate toward them. They understand the ego, whether they call it that or not, and they know that everybody wants to belong. One of the reasons they have power is because they’ve figured this stuff out. There are different power positions within any room, but the point remains that once you understand the nature of the ego, you can be more persuasive because you know how to play to it. You become a third-party observer of the group’s dynamics, even when you’re a member of the group. If you can set aside your own ego and effectively manage the others’, you put yourself in a great position of control. 3. Soothe or Sidestep Other Egos . In some situations you may need to deal with the egos of people who feel threatened by you. This can happen when you’re a new addition to a group (like a new employee or an outside consultant), when you’re dealing with someone who’s particularly insecure, or when you find [email protected] Page 3 yourself on the opposing side of an issue. The best strategy in these circumstances is to either soothe or sidestep the other ego. In doing so, you’ll be showing those who are threatened that you are on their side; you’ll be reminding them of your common goal; and you will be using language that validates their position. One of the easiest ways to soothe an ego is to use the phrase “From my perspective.” Perspective is an incredibly useful word that implies you’re going to take the emotion out of the conversation, and that makes everyone relax a little bit. You can say: “I know you have the toughest job in the room. I get the easy part. I get to give you advice. If it works, I get credit. If it doesn’t work, I get to say “They didn’t follow our advice perfectly.” . One way to soothe the egos of powerful people is by boosting them, then transitioning to your own point about how to help them accomplish their goal. It helps to try to look at the situation purely from that person’s perspective. The most effective way to handle a big, insecure ego is to sidestep it. The egotistical person will always be viewed more negatively, and the room will always side with the unifier.